The Bad Wolf caught in the Oncoming Storm
by FlyFly
Summary: Instead of 'Turn Left', the Doctor and Donna travel to Cardiff 2008 to refuel the TARDIS, and to meet up with a certain Captain. But when a strange ghost appears things go haywire. Dedicated to Beth, 'LimitedByCreativity'. 10/Rose, Jack/Donna.
1. Cardiff, UK, Europe, Earth, 2008

Hello everyone!

This story has been on for a while, and I know that I have yet to update it. However, seeing as it is the holidays, I thought I would revamp and finish it off.

Reading it over, I've found countless grammatical and spelling mistakes (written three years ago; not my fault).

This story is completely dedicated to 'Beffles', who, back in 2009 I dubbed my 'bestest fanfiction friend'. Her current username is LimitedByCreativity, so you should go and read her stories.

Disclaimer: Doctor Who, Torchwood and any other spin-offs of the Whoverse (the whole fifth season for instance…) are completely owned by whoever owns them. If the writing was under my control, Rose Tyler would not be in a parallel universe with Handy.

**This is set during 'Turn Left' at the end of season four. I've ignored the last three episodes of that season and anything that comes after that.**

That's about it, so please, do grab a cup of tea, and enjoy the show.

* * *

The faint whirring sound of a distinct alien ship hummed in front of a large fountain in Cardiff. The outline of a large blue box faded in and out of existence, a bright glowing white light pulsing on its roof. 'POLICE BOX' was spelt out in capital letters, lit from behind and situated above the door. Finally the box became solid and the rev of the engine stopped. A man with a mess of brown hair poked his head out the door of the Gallifreyan ship known as a TARDIS. He blinked his eyes in the light cast by the setting sun.

"Yep… I think this is Cardiff, somewhere around 2009…" he said as he stepped out of the box. He wore his usual attire of a brown pinstripe suit with a long lighter brown coat over the top of it. He promptly danced onto the pavement outside The Wales Millennium Centre, spinning on his heel to look at the surrounding scenery of the city. He had a hard time recalling when he had last been where he was standing. There had been so many visits to Cardiff Bay, and so much knowledge about time periods packed into his brain that even he sometimes had trouble sorting through it all.

Behind him, a woman rugged up in a thick black parka with fur lining the hood stepped out of the police box. She brushed bright red locks of hair from her face as wind from the sea blew vigorously passed her. For a moment, she watched him look around, before her own eyes were caught by their surroundings.

"_Cardiff_?" Donna Noble called out to the man, who immediately twisted his head in her direction. "Why are we in _Cardiff_? What's there to see _here_?" she asked, slightly bothered that she was only about 120 miles from where she came from.

"Because, there's a _great big_ rift here, and the TARDIS needs to fill up on radiation from a space-time rift so we can fly around some more, usually she can just draw energy from the universe in general, but she seemed a little low today – a bit sick. I thought I'd give her a nice treat." He took a few steps back toward his companion and patted the wood of TARDIS door lovingly, smiling at the blue paint. Donna next to him raised an eyebrow and shook her head.

"A space-time rift? What's that then?"

"Almost like a crack in the universe, but not really - very good for refuelling Gallifreyan ships. _What_? Don't look at me like that! It's not _dangerous_ or anything. It's practically as safe as houses."

"When _you_ say 'safe as houses', it doesn't sound safe anymore," Donna told him. She visibly shivered at her words, either from the cold or a memory of their time on the planet of Jythora in 8709, he could not tell.

"_Anyway_," he tried, changing the subject. He saw general interest in her eyes and continued, "I have an old friend somewhere around here, _somewhere_."

He was scratching the back of his head in the way that said 'honestly, Donna, I've no idea what we're doing here', and she rolled her eyes again.

"You have 'old friends' everywhere," she pointed out; using her fingers for indication marks, before hastily shoving her hands back under her arms for warmth. "Does this one live down a dark drain as well? Because I _swear_, Doctor, if you get these shoes wet, I will _personally_ see to it that the TARDIS no longer becomes 'as safe as houses' for you."

The indication marks were not needed, and he sheepishly smiled down at her. Her boots were her favourite red ones. She had told him so as he was trying to fix a wire beneath the console of the TARDIS, and _trying_ not to listen to her inane female human chatter.

Trying to ignore the glare she was shooting at him, he turned around and began to walk away, heading toward the water.

"Oi! Where at you going?" Donna ran after him, stretching her strides to match his.

"Where does it look like?" he asked her.

"Toward the sea? Wait, you're not going to throw yourself in are you? Are there aliens living in Cardiff Bay? _God_." He was amused by her ability to jump to conclusions. The Doctor neglected to reply as he continued to walk. two and a half minutes and they were standing in front of a small green door beside the water that said something about tourism in its window.

"Well your friend _certainly _knows how to make a living. Practically does the same thing you do."

He grinned at her as he held the door open for her to pass through, and then stepped in behind her. The room was quite small, with a large wooden counter taking up most of the space. The Doctor was absolutely delighted to see a small silver bell perched on the wood, and slapped it down with his palm. A soft chime rang around the room. Donna looked less than amused. The bell, seemingly to fail at calling anyone to attention made the Doctor frown along with her, and he was about to press it again (which in his mind, did not seem like such a bad thing) when a man appeared through some colourful strips of plastic.

"Hello, can I help you?"

"Yes, indeed you can!" The Doctor greeted him cheerfully. "We're just paying a little visit to Captain Jack, and wondered if you could point us in his general direction?"

The man, among a few other things, looked absolutely stunned.

OoO

Gwen Cooper looked up from her position at the computer in the central part of the hub as the large circular door slid back to reveal a wide-eyed Ianto Jones, and two people she had never seen before. Immediately, she was up from her chair and halfway down the stairs toward them when the sound of Jack's voice startled her.

"Doctor!" the Captain called from his office balcony, grinning down at the man in the long brown trench coat.

"Captain!" came the Doctor's reply, but immediately his face went sour. "You knew we were coming."

"We have videos all around the Plass and it's impossible _not_ to hear you coming. The TARDIS engines make a hell of a lot of noise."

"Do they? Huh, might have to fix that."

"What are you doing in this lonely part of the universe? Wait, hold on. Stay right there," Jack told them before the Doctor could reply.

The Captain disappeared back into his office, appearing again from a door to the right and walking along a catwalk around the edge of the room. He bounded down the circular metal stairs and ran straight at the Doctor when he reached the bottom, enveloping the Time Lord in a very human hug.

"It's good to see you, old man," Jack said as he pulled back, clapping the Doctor on the arm as he did so. He raised an eyebrow at Jack's remark, but shook it off with a smile.

"This." The Doctor gestured toward Donna, "is Donna Noble, super temp extraordinaire, and my best friend!"

The Time Lord grinned at his companion, who smiled kindly back, before her attention was caught by the Captain.

"_Very _nice to meet you," the Captain turned to face her, taking her hand in his and lifting it up to kiss her knuckles.

"_Don't_," both the Doctor and Ianto said. Gwen stifled a giggle behind her hand and looked away to keep herself composed.

"What?" Jack looked offended, "I wasn't doing anything!"

The Doctor just glared at him before spinning to look at Gwen and Ianto. He had to do a double take when he saw Gwen, his eyes narrowing as he scanned her face.

"You wouldn't happen to have any ancestors that lived in Cardiff, oh, say about 1869?"

Gwen had to look to Jack for assurance that it was okay that the man in front of her was _probably_ not insane as he sounded.

"I guess so, why?"

"That is a very gorgeous piece of spatial genetic multiplication right there. Absolutely the same! Ha!" the lopsided grin on the Doctor's face told Jack and Donna that they should not even bother to ask.

"Doctor, this is Gwen Cooper, and Ianto Jones. They work with me."

"Torchwood, defending the Earth!" the Doctor cried, smiling. For a moment it looked as though he was going to say something else, but all of a sudden his eyes darkened and he closed his mouth, looking away from them.

Donna was intrigued, but said nothing.

"We're just stopping by for a visit" Donna told the Torchwood team. "The Doctor said something about refuelling and a spacey crevice?"

"Space-time _rift_, Donna."

"Well, while you're here, you might be able to help with our Weevil infestation. We think they're coming through the rift somehow," Jack told the Doctor. The Time Lord's brow furrowed.

"What on Jythora is a _Weevil_?"

"Ah, come with me, I'll show you one."

"Wait!" The Doctor turned to face Donna. The pity-smile he sometimes used on her began to spread across his face.

"_What_?"

"Chips; we need chips in newspaper." For such an odd request, he looked quite serious.

It had either been the smile, the wide brown eyes, or the fact that the Doctor had been acting a little less bouncy than usual (something the Donna was surprised to see), that made his companion finally roll her eyes and agree to fetch him chips –_ in newspaper._

"Gwen?" she piped up, after a moment of silent staring between her and the Doctor. The black haired woman blinked with attention.

"Wouldn't be able to show me to the nearest chippery, would you?"

"Sure. Follow me Ms Noble." Together the two women made their way back through the prison-like bars and were almost through the circular doorway when Donna heard the Doctor's loud voice behind them,

"You're not telling me you've _locked them up_, are you?"

Yes, the Doctor had been acting a little stranger than usual the past few weeks, but whether he meant to or not, he never failed to make his companion smile.

OoO

"He's totally loopy. He speaks at ninety miles an hour, and you can't understand a single thing he's saying because it's all alien mumbo-jumbo. All you can do is smile and nod when he takes a breath, but then he's five enormous steps ahead of you, and you have no bloody idea what's going on!" Donna was telling Gwen as they walked back toward the 'less mundane' Torchwood entrance.

Gwen had pointed out that there was in fact a lift down from the middle of the Plass and though Donna was a little sceptical, she was willing to see how it worked.

Both of them had two wrapped packages in their arms, as Donna had had trouble with the Italian owner of the shop, who had mistaken her 'two' for 'four'. How he did so, she had no clue, but apparently he had only charged them for two.

"God, you should see Jack with pot plants," Gwen giggled.

"Do I want to know?"

"Probably not."

The pair of them burst out laughing as they crossed the Plass toward the invisible elevator, passing the TARDIS as they did so.

What happened next completely threw Donna, who thought she was only in for a night of chatting with Gwen and watching the Doctor and his old friend bond over adventures.

One of the parcels fell from her arm to the cold paving as she watched.

Right before them, a woman appeared. Dank hair, which may have once been blond or at least light brown, with a pale face and what almost looked like rags wrapped around her body. There was no sound effect as she materialised in front of the two women. As though from nothing, she appeared.

But the woman was not completely there. Donna thought that it was because her eyes were tired, it was extremely hard to focus on the woman. The edges of her were fuzzy, _faded_.

Gwen and Donna had stopped dead in their tracks, neither one making a sound.

The blond woman blinked at them, and then her attention was caught by something to their right. Donna, following her gaze, found her transfixed by the TARDIS.

"Hello?" Gwen called out over the thirty feet between them.

The woman's attention was drawn back toward them, but she did not reply.

"It's probably fine, harmless things pop through the rift all the time," the Torchwood agent told Donna quietly.

The Doctor's companion tried to nod, but a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach was starting to make her feel nauseous. There was something _wrong_.

"Are you all right?" Gwen called again.

The ghost-woman continued to stare at them. Then, with fluidity that almost seemed unnatural, she began to walk forward. To Donna, she seemed completely harmless, but Gwen pulled her back by the elbow. Still, she advanced toward them.

She stopped when she came to the abandoned newspaper packaged lying on the cold pavement. Carefully, the woman leaned over and plucked the small bundle from the ground and brought it back up to cradle in her own arms.

"_Chips in newspaper_."

Her lips did not move as she spoke. Her voice was an echo, growing and fading as though she was close and then drawing away. However, it commanded respect, with a noble edge to it, even with the innocent way she had said the sentence. She stared down at the parcel in her arms, lovingly, as if it were a child, and not just some greasy chips wrapped in week old newspaper.

"Who are you?" Donna asked suddenly. She shocked herself by asking, unaware that she was even planning to do so.

The woman tilted her face back up toward them, and smiled.

"_Donna Noble, take care of him for me._"

A moment later, there was only air where she had stood. The woman had vanished, taking the chips with her.

The feeling in Donna's stomach abruptly vanished with the woman.

She felt dazed.

"Ooh. What are we doing out here, Donna? Come on, the chips will be getting cold," Gwen told her. The sound of her voice jolted Donna into movement and she twisted and turned her head around to look for a trace of the girl.

"Did you see where she went?"

"What? Who?"

Donna glanced at Gwen, expecting her to be joking, but she was not. The Torchwood agent was looking at her as though she had just started spouting the names of alien technology and how Martian physics worked; the way the Doctor did.

"Donna?"

Something was wrong, and she needed to tell the Doctor. People did not just vanish into thin air. Not humans anyway.

"It's nothing. Let's get these back to the boys, hey?

OoO

"Yeah, it's _cosy_. It may need a little bit of work. You know, some plaster on the walls or something. It seems a bit _grey_." The Doctor was gesturing to the surrounding hub when Gwen and Donna returned. He did not seem particularly pleased with the large guns haphazardly placed on odd surfaces.

"We don't have time to paint it, Doctor; we barely have enough time making sure Earth stays safe while you're away."

"Oh! Pah! You're fine. Don't need me hanging about getting in your way." The Time Lord eyed a gun, "You're doing just fine…"

"We're back!" Gwen called.

All three men standing by the base of the water tower looked up at their entrance.

"Chips!" The Doctor cried, bounding over toward them. He went directly to Donna, plucking the warm parcel from her hands and turning it over in his fingers, trying to find the best place to prise the sticky tape back.

"There were four packages, but one…" Donna began to say, though she trailed off. She frowned at herself.

"We got three, remember Donna? You asked for two, but he gave us three, because he couldn't understand your accent," smiled Gwen, handing the two bundles she was holding to Jack.

"Yum," the Doctor stated suddenly, his hand pulling a long thick chip from inside his opened newspaper package. He pushed it into his mouth, licking his fingers one-by-one.

"No. There was this blond girl, remember? Gwen?" Donna looked to the other woman for answers. Had she just been imagining the woman? No, that could not be right. Whoever the woman had been, she had been there, talking to them. Gwen had seen her, Donna was sure of it.

"In the shop? I didn't notice her."

"No, in the square above us, next to the TARDIS," corrected Donna. She turned directly to the Doctor, "There was this blond girl, and she appeared out of nowhere, right in front of us, all pale and in rags. She said something about the chips… and then… god… I don't know…"

The Doctor, though appearing to be completely occupied with the bundle of pure bliss in his hands, had been listening, and snapped his head up when Donna trailed off.

"She said something about chips," he prompted, urging her to continue.

"Sorry?" she blinked at him blankly.

A concerned look came over the Doctor's features, his brows furrowing.

"Jack, hold this," the Time Lord ordered, holding the parcel for his friend to grab. As soon as his hands were free he whipped out his sonic screwdriver and began scanning his companion.

"Oi! What are you doing that for? Remember that conversation we had? Stop _buzzing_ me!"

"Hold still."

"What is it, Doctor?" Jack asked.

"Retention jammer, I think. It sort of disrupts brain activity to do with making new memories. The hippocampus, temporal lobe, that sort of area," the Doctor told them. "Whoever has done this has done a brilliant job. I'm talking absolutely _fantastic_. I can, maybe, it's possible, that I might be able to kick-start the memories that have been dampened. Sort of like rubbing at a foggy window to see what's on the other side. Here's the question though, what kind of person appears out of nowhere and then disappears again? Seems a bit much to steal some chips, don't you think? Especially with the – AH! Donna, face me?"

"Why?" she asked obstinately, folding her arms.

"It's fine, it'll be okay. Remember when we were with the Ood? I'm only opening up some parts of your mind so you can access the memories that have been blocked. I promise that that is all I am doing. We need to know what you've seen. Just to see what's so important that it needs to be blocked. "

Without her compliance, he took her face in his hands, holding his index fingers at her temples.

She closed her eyes, unable to manage with seeing both the real world and the memories in her mind's vision. As much as she had hated the sorrow that had bombarded her thoughts last time the Doctor done the telepathy thing, Donna also wanted to find out what was going on. She did not like the thought that someone was purposely messing about with her memories.

She could feel the Doctor bumbling about through her thoughts, and then -

"Is that better? Blond woman in the Plass; go."

"She was in rags, er, pale? She had hollow eyes, like she was the most tired person in the world. God, Doctor, you should have seen her." Donna frowned. "She told me to keep you safe or something, and then she just disappeared. But her voice! She didn't speak with her mouth, but it was like she was in my head."

"Telepathy," the Doctor supplied for her. "Anything else?"

"She knew my name. She said 'Donna Noble'. She knew me, Doctor."

He stared at her, unblinkingly for a few moments longer and then he looked to Jack, his expression unreadable.

"How can you not know that there are people appearing and disappearing right above your base? Don't you have scanners? It's not much of a defense for Earth if you can't pick up simple alien psychokinesis and plasma manipulation." The Doctor said to the Captain, and then waved at Donna as though she was to dismiss what she had seen.

"But Doctor –"

"Donna, don't worry about it. The rift is constantly active. If it's not some rogue ship trying to mess around with humans for the fun of it, it'll be some spectral thing trying to cross through to Earth."

"Doctor!" They all looked toward the Time Lord's companion as she cried out. She looked agitated and slightly disturbed.

"She knew my name, she was inside my head. I can't just pass that off as if it never happened. Clearly something is wrong if Gwen doesn't remember what she saw, and I had trouble with remembering. No one just does things for fun, alien boy, not even you."

It took the Doctor exactly three seconds to respond, "Right then! Let's go and see what we can see, shall we?"

His companion nodded in agreement, and took in a shaky breath, shooting a quick smile at Gwen when she noticed.

OoO

Ianto and Gwen opted to stay in the hub, to see if anything had been picked up on their scanners while no one had been monitoring the video surveillance. Jack accompanied Donna and the Doctor out to Roald Dahl Plass, mostly for the benefit of Donna, but also to find out what was going on with his rift. The Captain had not had an adventure with the Doctor in a long time, and though Weevil relocation sounded fun, disappearing blond women seemed to just about tick all the boxes.

"So she faded?" he asked the red-headed companion.

"Yeah, she was standing just about here… well until she moved."

The Doctor stopped his scanning at that.

"She moved?"

"Yeah, walked towards us as though she was going to leap at us or something, but she stopped when she got close to the packet of chips I dropped."

"She walked? As in, she wasn't just static, Donna, but she moved? One foot in front of the other?"

"That's what I said isn't it?"

"Ghosts can walk though, right? It's not as though they're stuck in one particular place."

"Plasma manipulation is different," the Doctor started. "You can't just make a ghost move if you're controlling it. Limbs are tricky to operate externally. As a child you have to learn, and it takes practise, but when you've mastered it, it's like you can never forget. External direction is almost completely impossible in terms of individual muscle movement for spectres. It's like trying to juggle while keeping a tennis ball balanced on your nose as you ride a unicycle across a tightrope _while_ peeling a banana."

He promptly went back to scanning the area with his sonic screwdriver, bleeping the pavement every few feet.

"We could wait for her to come back," suggested Jack, rocking forward on the balls of his feet, his hands buried in the pocket of his coat.

"Ugh!" The Doctor straightened, not facing them. "I _hate_waiting."

"So what is she then?" Donna enquired hesitantly.

"Alien probably; some form of phantom race."

"Are you sure she's alien, because she looked pretty human to me," Donna explained. At that, the Doctor turned around and grinned at her.

"Do I look pretty human to you, Donna?" he asked her. She was silent.

"So she was blond, hey?" Jack addressed Donna. "Anything else? She can't have been as gorgeous as yourself."

"Stop it!" the Doctor warned, pointing his sonic directly at Jack, before returning to his task. Donna had turned a shade of deep scarlet and looked away from the Captain, though she smiled ever so slightly.

"We wait then," announced the Doctor.

OoO

"Would you like a cup of tea?" Jack asked Donna.

She sat on a low bench beside the water tower, aimlessly looking through her hair for split ends (though she promptly dropped the strand of hair when he approached her). He placed a cardboard cup of tea beside her and sat down on her left, leaning forward to lean his elbows on his knees. The Doctor had disappeared inside the TARDIS more than half an hour beforehand, and had yet to emerge. It had grown dark as Donna had waited, stars sprinkling the dark sky above. Gwen had called Jack back inside Torchwood Three when she thought she saw a blip, but had mistaken it for general rift activity.

"Thanks," Donna smiled at him.

"So…"

"So… were you with the Doctor long? Before you left him, I mean."

"Oh, _I _didn't leave him. _He_ left me on a game station in the future. Just took off in the TARDIS with Rose, leaving me with a truck load of Dalek dust and not even a note."

"A game station though, that can't have been _too_ hard."

"It is if it's orbiting the Earth and you've no way to get back on the planet. I used to have a Time Vortex, and I was able to travel back to Cardiff, but I ended up in 1869. I just waited for the Doctor to fill up again. I knew he would have to one day. I joined Torchwood Three in the meantime."

"1869? _What_?"

"It gets a little hard to explain. But I can't die."

"Oh…"

"Yeah…"

Donna, though a little taken a back, decided to move the conversation along. Jack did not seem all that comfortable talking about his inability to _die_.

"Dalek, I've heard of that before."

"Dalek, gas-masked children, Slitheen, you name it, he's probably seen it." Jack grinned at her. "I've probably heard of it though."

"So how did you meet the Doctor?"

"I saved Rose from falling out of the sky," he began to chuckle. "A blond English girl with a Union Jack stamped across her chest in the middle of the Blitz. We had fun. The Doctor danced, in fact. What about you though? Miss Noble, how did you meet our Time Lord?"

"He abducted me in the middle of my wedding."

"_What_?"

"It's okay though, the groom turned out to be a bit of a prat."

"Oh…"

"Yeah…"

"I should make sure he hasn't fried the TARDIS, I've seen him do it before. This form spends too long tinkering." Jack stood and disappeared around the side of the ship. Donna let out a sigh when she heard the door shut. What had he meant by '_form_'? In fact, how could a man just _not die_?

"_Donna_."

She tore her eyes away from her fingers laced in her lap to stare up at the blond woman in front of her. Donna was about to cry out when she spoke again,

"_I need your help, Donna. Come with me?"_

Seeming to forget the tea placed beside her, Donna got up, and followed the mysterious woman.

* * *

I hope you enjoyed the first chapter of the revamp. I'm particularly pleased with it, as opposed to what it originally was.

It's also longer! Hooray!

More coming soon! But remember to review! (Even if you already have) Tell me what you think about the new, shiny version of this story.

FlyFlyxoxo

8


	2. Two Words, Donna

Donna felt as though she had just awoken from a dream. She was no longer near the TARDIS, but standing on the wooden planks of a jetty. From both sides, Donna could hear the sound of waves lapping against the shoreline. Salty air brushed passed her, creeping between the folds of her jacket and making her shiver.

Her focus, however, was on the woman in front of her. She almost seemed to glow against the dark sky and its reflection in the sea. But it was wrong. It was as though she was not affected by the chill of the air, or the wind. The woman's hair remained still, along with the tattered rags that hung from her shoulders; that was _odd_. Her smile was empty. Donna supposed it was to make her feel comfortable; more relaxed. It did not work.

"_The rift_," the echo resonated through Donna's ears. "_It changes; always in flux. It's strongest here. It is always strongest near the sea. But it will only be so for a few moments._"

"Who are you?" Donna asked. It was the most prominent question in her mind, on top of several others.

"_It does not matter. You will not remember, even if I did tell you_."

"Why, because of that retention thing?" Donna questioned her voice a little harsher than she intended it to be. "Are you just going to wipe my memory again?"

"_I have nothing to do with the jammer. Perhaps I would have been able to get around it before, but I've used up too much of my energy trying to find the right time period._"

"Time? Are you a time traveller too? Like the Doctor?"

For the first time the woman _really_ smiled.

"_Once._"

"Oh my god, you're like him aren't you?" Donna breathed.

"_No_."

"Oh." For a brief second, she had imagined how happy her best friend would have looked, had she returned with news of another Time Lord still in existence. Donna frowned at herself. Her thoughts felt muddled, as though they had been tampered with. Blindly hoping for something was not what she usually did. She was sceptical by nature; what was this woman doing to her?

"_Donna, you must listen to me. What I tell you is important._"

"Hold on, why don't you just tell him yourself? Why does it have to come through me?" Donna shot at her, her arms now folded across her chest. She was not about to go taking orders from some mysterious blond lady. The hair might work on blokes, but _not_ on her.

"_He cannot see me now. Not like this._"

Donna hated that her anger dissipated at the look on the woman's face. The blond looked young, but it was as though she had seen the whole world a thousand times over. Her desolate features told Donna that she was exhausted and completely lost. By nature, Donna Noble was sceptical, but it took less than an idiot to work out that the blond woman before her was trying to cling on to the only hope she had left: _Her_.

"But Gwen saw you. It's not just me that can see you, right?"

"_I need you to listen. This is important._"

"Right?"

"_All this will turn to dust. Everything you see and feel will be consumed by darkness. The stars at going out in the sky, Donna, and soon they will all disappear._"

"You think you're the first one to tell me this?" the Doctor's companion asked. She had heard this speech before. On all of her adventures with the Doctor, _someone_ would tell her something about the oncoming darkness or the stars going out.

"_No, but I will be the last._"

"So the world's going to end? So what? It'll be fine. Planets threaten to blow themselves up all the time. The Doctor always fixes it. That's what he does, he's a _doctor_, and he fixes things."

"_Not this time. This time, Donna, he needs your help._"

"Well _obviously_. Someone needs to clap him over the head when he pisses off an alien Lord, don't they?"

Another small smile.

"_I cannot save him, like I have before. But, you, Donna, have done so more times than you know. You are being pulled together, by forces even outside of my own reach. The universe does not need the Doctor alone, but the Doctor _and_ Donna Noble_."

"Well I'm not going to leave him any time soon, if that's what you're worried about."

"_This is a warning, Donna. You will forget it. But I need you to concentrate now._"

The woman took a few steps toward her.

It was sudden, the growth of golden light that consumed Donna's vision. The light swirled around her in different patterns and hues, but was warm and inviting. It reminded her of the TARDIS when the ship slipped into the back of her mind to comfort her after a terrifying experience on a planet. She wondered briefly if she had been sucked into another world, or another dimension. But the Doctor told her that other universes were sealed off, so she dismissed the thought. Out of the spinning brightness came the woman's voice;

"_In the future, there will be a time when you need to tell him this, Donna Noble_."

She tried to speak, but found that her voice was lost in the winds of the golden world. So she listened.

"_Two words, Donna. Just two words…"_

_OoO_

The console room of the TARDIS was warmer than the night outside of her walls. Donna gladly shrugged off her parka and threw it over the railing to the side of the ramp. The lights had been dimmed in the ship's customary stand-by mode.

"Donna!" the Doctor greeted her, beaming at her from his position under the central console.

"Why are you so perky?" she enquired hesitantly, not particularly enthusiastic about the answer. A nice cup of tea was what she could really do with. She could feel a headache beginning with a small niggling sensation in the middle of her forehead. Dealing with a hyperactive Doctor was _not _on her list of things she wanted to do at the present.

"No reason," he replied. "Though, I think I may have just found the thing that makes the bumping noise when we're coming out of the Time Vortex." He stood, twirling what looked like small pickaxe between his fingers and grinning madly.

"Lovely," she deadpanned.

"Are you all right?"

They stared at each other for a moment. Honestly, Donna had absolutely no idea if she was all right. It felt as though there was something missing and she could not put her finger on what it was. The Time Lord's expression changed from general enthusiasm to concern as he saw her frown. His big brown eyes waited intently for an answer. He was too apprehensive, a far cry from his usual normalness (well… she said _normal_).

"Yeah, fine. What's up with you? You look worried."

"Do I?" His whole look changed, and he looked toward the screen at the console.

Truly, he had been a little different ever since they had been in The Library. Perhaps it was the loss of that River Song woman. It had seemed to Donna that there was something going on between the two of them. Or it could have been that the TARDIS had been acting a little oddly (according to _him_). Maybe the time of year would cheer him up?

"Hey, it's Christmas soon isn't it?" she tried.

_Wrong thing to say._

But the absolute grief that crossed his face was short lived as he looked up at her.

"Don't you hate Christmas?"

"Yeah well, I supposed it can't be all _that_ bad, right?"

His grinned returned at that.

She did not see it for long.

Donna's ability to see abruptly vanished, and was taken over by slivers of light that washed in from the sides of her vision. She felt the ground open up beneath her, and was vaguely aware of her body falling through clear space. All at once, she could see the black of the night sky and the brightness of the sun. Small glowing spheres that seemed to be planets whizzed and flickered passed her.

"_Two_…"

It was faint, but there was definitely a voice in the strange place she found herself in. It whispered on a different level of her conscious, beneath all of the gushing wind that threatened to blow through her ears.

"-onna!"

And then another voice, louder than the whisper, and different – concerned maybe. She was more intent on hearing the echo.

"-ear… Don-!"

"… _words…_"

She blinked, and the stars, wind and light disappeared, replaced by the roof of the TARDIS. Two fuzzy faces peered down at her.

"_God_, my back kills. What'd you do alien boy? Zap me with something?"

"What? _No! _Donna you collapsed!" The blurry Doctor looked appalled that she had blamed him, and leant back.

Donna frowned at him, and let out a small gasp when a shock of pain streaked through her head. The Doctor was back near her face then, scanning her with his sonic screwdriver. She had to blink rapidly to keep the sharp blue light from burning her eyes.

"Are you in pain?" he was asking. "I didn't see where you fell, you may have bumped something. Try and stay awake, Donna."

She _utterly_ hated the way he fussed; but only when it was directed on her. The Doctor was patting her forearm, a little harder than what would be considered soothing. It was beginning to get annoying, the buzzing, the patting, and the overly concerned look in his eyes.

"Stop it," she barked at him. Managing to sit herself up without the help of either of the blurry faces, she tried to blink to clear her vision. No doubt she would trip on something if she could not see properly.

"It's perplexing…" the Doctor muttered to himself. He was examining the side of his sonic and did not even notice the dark look she sent at him.

"Are you sure you're okay?" the other face asked quietly. Though his outline was still a little fuzzy, it was obvious that it was Captain Jack who was speaking to her. She would be able to spot the mega-watt smile from London – maybe even Midnight.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she told him, trying to take the callousness out of her voice.

"The _jammer_," exclaimed the Doctor, as though he was appalled at the use of it for a second time. "But I can't seem to find the source in any immediate galaxy. Donna?"

He was holding out his hands to her, and she turned, letting his fingers rest either side of her forehead.

"Because you didn't come to us immediately, it's going to be harder to find the memory that has been blocked. I may have to do a little searching, so it will take longer than before. Okay?"

"Sure…"

Donna let her eyes fall shut.

It was another minute or so before the Doctor spoke up again.

"_Really, _Donna?" she heard the Doctor whine. A grinning Jack flashed through her visual memory, along with several other mental stills she had taken since she had met the Captain.

Instinctively, she pulled back from his hands, her eyes snapping open.

"I'm not going to let you do this if you're just going to go through everything!"

"Fine, _fine_. If you don't want me to see something, imagine a door closing and I promise not to look." He seemed sincere, prompting her with a small flick of his fingers to move forward again. She quirked a brow at the practised way in which he had said it, as though he had gone through women's memories before.

Before she closed her eyes, Donna saw the Doctor give Jack a look.

"What did _I _do?" the Captain complained.

"_Everything_."

With the Doctor's fingers on her temples again, Donna started seeing all sorts of memories behind her eyes. Several times she had to bring up an image of a closing door, and true to his word, she felt the Doctor veer off in another direction.

"Why's it taking so long?" she grumbled.

"All species have different brains, different ways they're wired and sorted. No human has the same organisation of memories as another. But that's not the problem."

He broke contact, leaning back on to the heels of his feet. Donna's eyes flickered open.

"It's like there's this gaping hole where something should be. It's as though something has been there and just vanished from your mind, _and_ you're not even aware of it. I could trigger the memory of the woman before because you came straight to me and it was the first time you had to try and recall it. It's possible that _now_, whatever is trying to keep these experiences from you has started not just _blocking_ but permanently _deleting_them."

"So why did she collapse?"

"Taking a chunk out of working memory would make any human lose consciousness for a short period of time. The brain has to recalibrate itself." The Time Lord stood, digging his hands into his pockets and gazed down at the two of them. "You're lucky it was done properly, Donna, your body isn't even aware it lost something."

"But I know now."

"Yes but that's conscious thought. Knowledge doesn't get passed around in your brain as information that can be translated internally; at least _human_ brains don't work like that. It's just all data and electrical pulses, not relative at all," the Doctor told them.

"So what do we do about it?" Jack asked, a hand possessively supporting Donna's back.

Donna herself was staring up at the Doctor with a worried expression that matched Jack's. Truthfully, the Doctor had absolutely no idea what he was going to do about it.

He could not trace the jammer, and unless it had a range he had never seen before, he struggled to believe it existed. He desperately needed to know why it was being used though. Donna was not just any human, she was his _best friend_, and _no one_ in their right mind would dare cross him intentionally.

Locking memories away so that they could not be accessed was simple and easily done by any creature that had control of their own mind. But _erasing_ was a very serious thing; a very serious _third-party_ thing. He knew that Donna was not able to do this to herself. She was fantastic, but he was sure she was just a regular human.

There were so many questions and no one to answer them.

Unless…

"I guess I could take you to the Shadow Proclamation" the Doctor started.

Both of them stared at him blankly.

"Oh come on, Jack! You know them. The inter-galactic policemen. _Judoon._"

"Do you think that's safe for Donna? Aren't there protocols for primitive species travelling through space?" Jack asked.

He was _probably_ right. But the Doctor supposed that that could be overlooked, seeing as she _was_ travelling with the only Time Lord left in existence, and that there was someone in the universe with one hell of a memory eraser. Besides, the Judoon owed him for almost trying to kill him last time he was on the moon.

"Nah, it'll be fine. I'd be more worried about the – WHOA!"

The unexpected tremble from the TARDIS threw the Doctor off his feet and straight onto the grating. The ship continued to shake violently, her three occupants only able to grab the closest thing available to them – in Donna and Jack's case, each other.

The centre console sparked wildly, and then almost as quickly as the shaking had begun, it stopped.

The ship was completely still.

"What the _hell_ just happened?" exclaimed Jack, prying himself from the grating.

The Doctor was already on his feet, hauling Donna up, and then rushing for the doors. Something felt completely and utterly _wrong_. And it was not the usual 'wrongness' emanating from the Captain, it was just _wrong._

"Doctor?" both of his companions called as he grabbed the inside handle of the TARDIS door.

He swung the doors of his ship open.

"Doctor? What's happened?" He felt Donna come to stand beside him, and heard a sharp intake of breath.

"It's gone."

"That's just space."

"The Earth, it's gone."

There was a stunned silence for a moment, and then the Doctor was running up the grating to the centre console, checking their coordinates.

"What do you mean it's just _gone_?" Donna asked from the doorway. Jack now stood beside her, peering out into the eerie blackness of space.

"We haven't moved," the Time Lord mumbled to himself. "We're still in the same place. We haven't moved an inch. We're fixed. The TARDIS hasn't shifted at all."

"_What_?" he heard Jack call from the doorway.

"There's nothing, not a trace, not even a whisper…" the Doctor was saying to himself, as he eyed the screen attached to the console. He leaned back, scratching the back of his head, and looking even more worried than before. "Ooh, that is fearsome technology."

Obviously the long range retention jammer had absolutely _nothing_ on moving a planet.

"But that means that they've lost the sun." Donna heard Jack whisper beside her.

The expanse of the universe suddenly did not seem so inviting. It scared Donna, the dark gloom in which they were suspended. She wondered if the people of Earth knew that they had moved. Would they expect the sun to rise in the morning like it did every day? Would it?

"That's my whole world," she murmured. She felt heat rise to her cheeks, and she turned, slowly moving toward the central console, looking to the Doctor for answers.

"Are they safe?" Donna asked. "My Mum, Gramps, all of my friends, everyone, what's happened to them? Are they dead? Aren't they? Tell me, Doctor, are they safe?"

The face that turned toward hers was so full of despair that she had to choke down a sob.

"I don't know, Donna. I'm sorr-"

"No" Jack cut in, his voice dangerous. He turned around to face them. "That's not good enough Doctor, sorry doesn't cut it. I have a team of people down there, I already lost two of them, I'm not losing the rest. You find a solution to this, and you find it fast."

The Doctor was clearly caught off guard, and stared at Jack for a few moments before he spoke. There was a silence while both Jack and the Doctor took a deep breath in.

"Yes, of course, I will find _something_."

"So what are we going to do?" Jack enquired, a little higher than the other two would have expected. The Captain strode toward them, having closed the doors of the TARDIS.

"Well," the Doctor drew out, still scratching his head. "I guess there's good reason to now; I'm taking you to the Shadow Proclamation."

With that, he pulled down a level, and the TARDIS began its usual shaking as it flew through the Time Vortex. Donna, the Doctor and Jack clung onto the console.

None of them looked to the others.

* * *

Chapter two.

Again, sorry it's been so long. I'm still getting Story Alerts and Favourites for this practically every day. It's ridiculous.

Hopefully with my better skills in writing this will become a good fic. Better than what it was going to be three years ago!

Hope you enjoyed!


	3. Invasion

The silence of the Medusa Cascade was deafening. Swirls of star dust spun around each other without a sound, their orbiting hardly heralded by a whisper. To a passing pleasure-cruise ship with hundreds of passengers aboard, it would seem like the perfect backdrop for a family photo (taken, of course, on one of the ship's many viewing platforms). The mystery surrounding the famous and beautiful location in the universe made any company owner a very happy alien. Tourists flocked from far and wide to take a look at the spiralling magnificence.

Of all the septillions and tredecillions of planets and moons in the universe, only twenty seven felt a jolt as they were pulled into one of the best tourist destinations. Out of synchronisation with the rest of time by _one second_, they were not even able to be seen.

Amongst the twenty seven, some were inhabited. Screams and gasps were heard across their night skies.

"_We looked up. The sky had changed._"

OoO

On the human planet, Earth, chaos had erupted. The magnitude of the move had caused all of the planet's tectonic plates to shift, creating earthquakes in many different countries. In most large cities, skyscrapers were almost to the point of collapsing. The people of the planet were lucky; out of the billions of people that lived on their small world, only a few had died in the move. Their planet was lucky indeed.

Some of the satellites that had been within Earth's orbit had been left behind, but there were a few, which allowed for some equipment to work. News stations were still broadcasting.

"The United Nations has issued an edict, asking the citizens of the world not to panic."

As were talk shows.

"But it's an empirical fact! The planets didn't just come to us. We came to them."

And, of course, Paul O'Grady.

"I thought, 'what was I drinking last night? Furniture polish?'"

OoO

Sparks were flying everywhere in the main part of the Hub that was Torchwood Three. Several stacks of papers and books had been tossed to the ground, littering the cold concrete floor. Electrical wires had snapped and the air hung with static.

"Have you _called_ him?" Gwen asked for the third time.

Ianto shot her an annoyed look, and nodded. He began to redial Jack's number again. The past few attempts had resulted in nothing but feedback on the other end.

Gwen herself was dialling her husband. She passed one of Torchwood's many screens in the main part of the Hub as she did so, her eye caught by what looked like scanner readings.

"Ianto?" she called. Gwen cleared her throat of the waver that had unexpectedly snuck in. "I think you should come and look at this!"

"What is it?" He stepped in behind her, peering over her shoulder at the screen.

"Is it just me, or do they look like _planets_?"

OoO

In an old Tudor bricked home, 12 Bannerman Road, a boy was pulling himself off the attic ground. The childlike curiosity that spread across his features looked very odd with his teenage appearance.

"Mr. Smith?" Luke Smith asked out loud.

There was a strange hissing sound above the fake fireplace, and the bricks stretched away to reveal a large silver rimmed screen.

"_Luke_!" a short, brown haired woman was picking her way through the fallen debris and around a collapsed bookcase to get to her adopted son. She clung to him as she reached him, looking him over for cuts or bruising.

"Are you all right?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. What's going on, Mum?"

"Sarah-Jane," a new voice entered the conversation, emanating from the screen. "It appears the planet's atmospheric shell has been somewhat modified to . Tracking the co-ordinates now."

"What does _that_ mean?"

"He means the Earth has been moved. We're not in our solar system anymore, right Mr. Smith?"

"You are correct."

"Moved?" Sarah-Jane Smith asked herself.

OoO

The UNIT base in New York was halfway to being completely demolished. Not unlike the Torchwood Three base in Cardiff, papers and stationary were scattered hazardously across the ground, and most of the wiring had been ruined. It was almost a miracle that an alarm could be heard ringing around the building.

Office workers and those in military uniforms were all picking themselves off the ground, or leaning against desks to reacquaint themselves with gravity. Among them a woman dressed completely in a black military outfit was going from person to person, asking in a decidedly English accent, whether anyone was badly hurt.

"Are you okay?" she asked a young man in UNIT uniform. He groaned in reply, his forehead weeping red liquid.

"I'll get you something to stop that bleeding shall I?" Doctor Martha Jones tried to put a humorous inflection in her voice, but it only came out as weak and not at all comforting.

"Martha!" a woman called from the window.

"I'm a little busy at the moment, can it wait?" the London doctor replied, searching through a drawer for something other than a stapler and pencils.

"You have to look! Look out the window! Look at the sky!" cried the woman.

Martha rolled her eyes, but did as she was told, coming across the room to stand by the woman.

"What's wrong?" she asked as she approached. Looking out next to the woman, all she could see was the usual New York sky line, although a few buildings had looked a little brighter twenty minutes beforehand. Was the sky darker? Martha was confused. But then something caught her eye; behind the Empire State Building a globe hung amongst the clouds. A planet, surrounded by several more.

Martha Jones' eyes darted from one sphere to the next. There were _planets in the sky._

She could only stare.

OoO

"Yeah, Rhys? Shut up. Stay indoo- I don't _know_! Look, just put the telly on and make yourself a cup of tea. Oh, and phone my mother would you? I'm not sure how long the phone lines are going to stay up, so do it quickly. Make sure she's all right," Gwen commanded of her husband who was babbling over the top of her at the other end of the line.

"_So I'm just going to jump in the car and drive over am I? Gwen, have you _seen_ the planets?_"

"Yes. Look, I have to go, but I'll try to keep in touch, all right? And Rhys? I love you." She hit the 'end' button before he could respond.

She made her way down to where Ianto was flicking through TV channels on one of the computers.

"_What was I drinking last night? Furnitu_-"

The sound was abruptly cut off.

"Are you all right, Ianto?" Gwen asked, resting a hand on the man's left shoulder as she came up behind him.

The grim line of his mouth told her that he was anything but. She rubbed his shoulder and tried to smile, but his gaze remained on the screen before him.

Jack had left them before, and it had been terrible. Gwen hoped that he would not get himself into _too_ much trouble, and she could see that Ianto hoped that as well.

"Have you found anything?" she enquired lightly, trying to get the poor man's mind onto something besides their leader.

"Whoever has done this has established an atmospheric shell. It keeps the air and the heat in, and our satellites have been brought through space with us. Mobile phones, the internet and television still work." He gestured to the muted screen before him

"For how long?"

"I'm not sure, but they want to keep us alive whoever they are," Ianto told her.

"So you know someone has done this?"

"There are twenty seven planets orbiting around each other, and this," a new window was brought up on the screen, of a number of reddish blue orbs on a black background. Slowly, the orbs moved, obviously rotating around each other. A large one in the centre moved, and a fleet (or what Gwen assumed was a fleet) of red discs appeared, hovering directly in the centre of the planets. Ianto tapped his finger against the screen where the red discs, quite suddenly, began to move. "is a group of ships. _They_ are coming toward us."

The pair of Torchwood agents stared at the screen before them. The discs seemed so harmless, floating seamlessly through the murky black of the picture.

A shrill ring made both Gwen and Ianto jump. Vibrations came from a small black phone on the desk beside the keyboard.

A phone.

Gwen snatched up the noisy device and put it to her ear.

"Hello?"

"_Jack_?" a female voice crackled on the other end of the line.

"No, actually, it's Gwen. Who's this?"

"_Martha. It's Martha, Gwen_." The Welsh woman felt her shoulders sag in relief. At least it was someone who could be trusted. "_Where's Jack?_"

"He went off and disappeared again – with the Doctor and Donna Noble. Where are you, Martha?"

"_He's with the Doctor? Well that's just _brilliant_._" Gwen heard a commanding voice on the other end, behind Martha's. The former companion must have taken the phone away from her ear, as her voice was suddenly far away, replying to the command of someone from UNIT.

"Martha?"

"_Sorry, Gwen. I have to go. If you hear from Jack, or the Doctor, tell him to give me a call, all right?_"

"But Martha, there are ships. There are ships coming toward the Earth," Gwen tried to tell the woman on the other end of the phone. There was a heavy sigh from the former companion of the Doctor.

"_I know_, _UNIT is going absolutely ballistic. There's not much we can do about it though-"_

The loud speaker in the hub crackled into life midway through Martha's sentence.

'_Exterminate_!'

Gwen jumped, hearing an audible gasp from Martha, and an echo from her end of the line.

"_No_."

'_Exterminate_!'

"Martha? Martha, what is that?"

"_Gwen, find Jack. Get in contact with the Doctor. You _need_ to. Things just got serious_."

The line went dead.

But the gravelly voice that came through the loud speaker only continued.

'_Exterminate!'_

OoO

Doctor Martha Jones was physically shaking. She was holding onto the phone in her hand so tightly her knuckles were turning white.

"Geneva declaring ultimate code red!" someone was shouting. "Ladies and gentlemen, we are at _war_."

There was an all mighty crash as people were thrown to the floor, and sparks flew from computer cabling. Files of paper flew to the ground as the building shook. Dragging herself up with the help of a nearby desk, Martha rushed to the window to look out. The ships, which before had been bright red dots on a scanner were now flying through the New York City skyline – and Martha, knew what was coming.

"Doctor Jones, you will come with me," General Sanchez was saying from behind her. Turning away from the window, Martha looked to the older man, flanked by a young, innocent looking boy in a red cap. "Project Indigo is being activated."

OoO

They were halfway along a corridor when Martha finally protested.

"But Sir, we can't use Project Indigo! We don't even know if it works!"

OoO

The grunt was winding aside the shelves in the basement, and she could hear the gunfire from the floors above. UNIT had been breached, obviously. The bile that rose to her throat was sticky, and clung there without any notion of letting go.

"Put it on, Doctor Jones," the General commanded, looking back to her.

A black vest hung from hooks on the wall of white. Never before when Martha had seen it, did it look quite so unsafe and menacing. Hesitating for a moment, Martha stepped up to take the vest from its hook. She drew it around her body, sliding her arms under the straps.

"Are you sure?" she asked, looking up to Sanchez.

"You are our only hope of finding the Doctor, Jones," he confirmed readily. She nodded, forcing the clips together to secure the device in place on her body.

"But failing that," and the General was suddenly right in front of her, leaning down to talk out of the hearing range of the young solider. "With the power invested in me by the Unified Intelligence Task Force, I order you to take this."

The chip he held up in front of her was a square, about the size of a folded dollar bill. The sight of it made the bile in her throat rise up even further and her stomach drop well below the floor.

"The Osterhagen Key."

The name sent a chill down her spine. There were over six billion people in the world with absolutely no clue that the key existed, let alone what it did.

"I can't take that," she told the General firmly.

"You _have_ to. You know what to do, Doctor Jones, for the sake of the human race." He forced the small plastic case into her hand.

Quickly, he stepped back, saluting her.

"Good luck, Martha Jones," he said, with a quick nod. Then he and the young officer were gone, taking out their weapons and running toward the door.

Another explosion from somewhere far off sent Martha's thought into a whir.

She had no idea where Jack was, where the Doctor was, where Donna was. If the world was being invaded and the Doctor did not know about it, and he did not show up, then where would they be?

Martha refused to think that this was the end for the human race. She had seen the future for them, and she knew that they definitely did not end here.

Then again, the Doctor had warned her about changing the course of history.

With one final breath, Martha pulled the cords on the teleportation device, and blinked out of existence.

OoO

A mighty ship at the centre of the twenty seven planets hovered silently in space, on board, an unimaginable army.

"_Commence the landings, bring the humans here!_" a red metal creature was directing from the height of a dais illuminated by light. Its voice carried throughout the large ship, its order heard and acted upon by lesser, copper coloured aliens.

"Supreme Dalek," a new voice, less rigid in speech, addressed the red creature. "Is there news?"

"_The Earth has been subjugated_!" was the reply, the glowing blue eyepiece swivelling toward a darkened shadow.

"Good, good. And _him_? What of the Doctor?" the voice enquired.

"_Negative_. _No reports of the Time Lord. We are beyond the Doctor's reach. He cannot stop us!_"

"It is fascinating, that after everything, we can simply go undetected. But you must be wary still, Supreme Dalek, we cannot let pride stop us now." The dark figure moved further from the shadows, a blue light – not unlike the one on the Supreme Dalek's eye socket – glowed brightly where the figure's forehead should be. The shrivelled face of a man was barely visible, skin wrinkled and brown, eyes closed over. The manic grin on the face of the crippled man was frightening. Finally, he was winning; and even if the Doctor did somehow manage to find them, he would not stop them, not _this time_.

"_We are beyond the petty emotions of humans! We will not fail!"_

"And yet, Dalek Caan in uneasy…" There was a momentary flash of light, as a dais at the other end of the room was lit, revealing one of the creatures bare in its own casket. The octopus like creature was flailing, its central eye flickering as it began to speak.

"_He is coming! Oh creator of us all, your Doctor is coming!" _the creature sang, giggling.

"_The abomination is insane!"_ The Supreme Dalek countered.

"Have some respect, Supreme Dalek. Dalek Caan only speaks the truth, and it is because of him that we are here."

"_The knowledge, the lighting and the blackness of his broken heart!  
The essence, the thunder and the red fire behind his eyes!  
The goddess, the hound, and the gold that lights his path!  
The Bad-_"

The freakish poem of the crazed Dalek was interrupted, "_A teleportation device has been activated on Earth! Intercept it!"_

There was a flash of blue light, and the centre of the room was suddenly occupied by a young, dark woman, looking extremely confused.

"What? Where am I?" she asked, looking around, and pulling herself from the floor.

"What is the meaning of this!" the shadowed voice cried.

"_The girl has been identified! Martha Jones - former companion of the Doctor!"_ the Supreme Dalek informed the shrivelled man.

"Another companion?" the voice was amused now. "How very kind of you to join us, Miss Jones."

A spotlight of harsh white light went up around her, caging her where she sat. Martha looked petrified, surrounded by an alien she knew so well to be the destructive force behind the demise of her friend's race.

"What are you going to do with me?"

"There now," the voice ignored her, the shadow turning to address another corner of the room, veiled in darkness. "I promised to bring you a friend did I not?"

The faint reply was a sob.

* * *

I am very aware of how much you guys must hate me right now, and I'm so incredibly sorry!

I've had a lot of things going on, and this has been at the very back of my mind. The past couple of days though, I've been very bored, and I sort of found this in my documents, and this long note about how much my past self would hate me if I did not give the lovely readers of my fic another chapter (seriously, I wrote a note to my future self). So I feel incredibly guilty!

I hope you enjoy this chapter, and hopefully you'll see some more in the near future!

Remember to review, because it prompts me to write more as the emails come into my inbox reminding me!

Thanks again guys! FlyFlyxoxo


	4. The Shadow Proclamation

When the TARDIS engine finally stopped, the Doctor flicked a few buttons, and without a word swept his coat from the railing and hauled it on. Donna and Jack followed silently as the three of them made their way down the ramp toward the door.

What greeted them on the other side was a line of soldiers, armed with guns and covered black armour. Donna, who rarely had any qualms with the way aliens looked, was taken aback as what appeared to be the leader in front of the line, had a head _very_ similar to that of a rhinoceros.

He snorted, and his words came out in a broken, English sentence; to Donna it sounded almost as if he were putting full stops after every syllable.

"Unauthorised landing. State your intention!"

"Interesting," Donna heard the Doctor mutter. "We're here about the missing planet, Earth. It's been taken, heard anything about that?"

"You will follow."

The soldiers promptly fell into line beside and behind the three visitors as they were led down the white tiled corridor.

"Was that just me, or did the TARDIS have trouble translating?" Jack whispered to the Time Lord as they walked. The Doctor's eyes flickered from one companion to the other, and he nodded imperceptibly, but said nothing.

Jack looked back to Donna and shrugged.

The three were led, to what Donna immediately assumed was some sort of board room. She had served coffee once, to a meeting of the heads at one of her old temp jobs. The room had a long white marble table in the middle, surrounded by eight or ten black chairs. A staircase swept up to a balcony overlooking the room. Everything was white, and tiled. The wall opposite the stairs, however, was glass, overlooking the expanse of stars.

"You will wait," the rhinoceros ordered, and left the room. The soldiers that had escorted them through the series of hallways now stood at the edges of the room, guns held by their sides and large helmets still on.

The Doctor approached her slowly, trying to act as though he were looking out at the universe beyond the glass.

"Are you okay?" he asked, deadly quiet. She frowned up at him, confused this odd display from him.

"I'm fine," she replied shortly. His eyes met hers for a brief moment, and then he spun and walked away.

"What are we waiting for?" Jack spoke up from the head of the table. He had made himself comfortable in one of the chairs, and grinned at Donna. She smiled in return and took the seat opposite him.

"The Shadow Architect, I would imagine," the Doctor told him. He eyed one of the Judoon by the door, and then turned to give his companions a bright smile. Donna was not impressed by these recent sudden changes in the Doctor's mood. She had trouble reading him now.

"Who's that then?" she asked, folding her hands together over her stomach and resting her elbows on the arms of the chair.

"Someone who _isn't_ going to believe I still exist," the Time Lord grinned.

His sentence was echoed by the opening of double doors behind him, and the entrance of a refined looking woman.

She was dressed completely in black, like the soldiers flanking her. The long layered dress she wore looking like something out of the eighteenth century. Her skin was almost translucent and deadly white; as was the hair kept up by black netting. The feature Donna found most spooky were her eyes, a chilling shade of red that locked on her own for only a small moment, but made Donna shrink in her seat.

"The Time Lords are extinct! They are the stuff of legend. _You _should not _exist_," the woman told the Doctor haughtily.

The grin on the Doctor's face only grew larger before he turned to face her.

"Funny that. But more importantly, I have a missing _planet_."

"Yes, we are aware of the abduction of Earth. However, that is not the _only_ planet that has been taken. In the same moment, another twenty _four_ worlds have vanished," the Shadow Architect informed the three of them.

Both Jack and the Doctor seemed to straighten at her words.

"_Twenty four_?" Jack repeated incredulously.

"Which ones?" The Doctor was already moving to where the woman stood by what looked like a screen at the other end of the table. Jack did the same, coming to stand beside the pair, leaving Donna to watch as the Doctor pushed his glasses over his nose.

The Doctor read from the screen in front of him as the names of planets were shown, "Jahoo, Callufrax Minorr, Wept, Clom…" he trailed off.

"All of them different sizes, some are populated as the Earth is, and others are not. They have seemingly been taken at random from different parts of the universe."

"You say that they've been 'taken', you know that someone has done this on purpose?" Jack asked.

"What other explanation could there be? Planets do not _disappear_," the woman snapped, not bothering to look up from the screen.

Jack raised his eyebrows, and looked across at Donna, the hint of a sneaky smile turning at his lips.

"What about Pyrovillia?" Donna spoke up finally.

"Who _are_ these companions of yours, Time Lord?" the Shadow Architect addressed the Doctor. He was straightening up to answer, but Donna did it for him.

"I'm _Donna_," she said. "I'm a human-being. I may not be the 'stuff of legend', but I'm just as important as pompous Time Lords, thank you."

She pushed back her chair and stood, approaching the three crowded around the screen.

"Yeah…" Jack agreed in a murmured tone from beside the Doctor.

"When we were in Pompeii, Lucius said that Pyrovillia had gone missing. Is that a planet?"

From the other end of the room, the rhinoceros spoke, "Pyrovillia is cold case."

Donna looked back over her shoulder. What the hell did _that _mean?

"So?" Jack asked for her.

"The planet of Pyrovillia disappeared over two-thousand years ago, it would not be a part of this," the woman told them. She went back to tapping at the screen, and Donna had the sudden urge to shout at her again.

"Yes," she acknowledged, drawing out the 's'. "But there was Adipos 3, too. Remember that breeding planet that Ms Foster talked about?"

Suddenly the Doctor's eyes lit up, and he was bouncing from one foot to the other, grinning.

"You are a genius, Donna!" he called. Her response was a smirk in the direction of the Shadow Architect, who simply ignored it.

The Doctor tapped the screen in front of him and holographic orbs appeared over the table. For a moment they spun slowly around each other, and Jack, Donna and the Architect waiting in an awkward silence. The Doctor was still pressing the screen, and another two orbs appeared among the others.

The Time Lord looked up over the screen, clicking his tongue against his teeth in thought.

"Poosh," Jack said after a moment.

The Doctor was already back at the screen, saying something about the benefits of having companions to the Shadow Architect. She stood solemn beside him as a final orb was added to the hologram.

The – now – twenty seven planets jittered above the table. Then, suddenly, they were rearranging themselves, the larger four in the middle, rotating, with another ring around them, and then another.

"What just happened?" Jack and Donna asked at the same time, their eyes met, and they smiled.

The Time Lord was moving around to stand beside the centre of the table, looking up at the orbs hanging the air.

"They arranged themselves into the optimum pattern, I didn't even do anything." He cooed as one of the smaller orbs flew right by his face, and he smiled as one would at a child

"Oi! Don't go all spaceman on us, what does that mean?"

"Well, basically," the Doctor started, lifting a finger to gesture toward the centre of the rings, "the planets fit together like an engine, creating power in the centre, here. It's a very clever design, actually, a great big power house created by the gravitational pull of the worlds."

"Who would think of such a thing?" the woman inquired from the head of the table.

"Probably the same 'who' that has deleted your memory, Donna," the Doctor turned to his companion.

"You mean that blond she was talking about? You think she could have done this, Doctor?" Jack asked.

"No, she seemed rather benign, and Donna said she was in rags." The Doctor turned to look at Jack, "I've been wrong before, but usually someone doesn't cry for help and then erase that memory. It has to be someone else."

"You think that was a cry for help, then?"

"If there is a suspect for this case, then we have to find and detain them immediately," the Shadow Architect suddenly cut across the conversation.

"That's the problem, she's appeared twice to Donna, but she seemingly disappears," the Doctor said. "And I don't think she could be described as a suspect, more of a victim."

"Is there any way that you can recover erased memories?" Jack asked the woman.

"It depends on the technique. We can try; however, _only_ if it will benefit the case," she answered, eyeing them both.

Donna saw Jack and the Doctor exchange an odd sort of a look, before the Doctor nodded.

"Wait." Donna frowned, "Don't I get a say in this?"

The Doctor approached her again, this time looking her dead in the eye as though that was supposed to comfort her. He took her by the elbow and tried to smile.

"You don't have to do anything, Donna. But we have absolutely no idea where the Earth has gone, and if what you saw can be any help at all, we want to have you be able to recall it. There was only so much I could do to try and bring back your memory, but maybe the Shadow Proclamation has some sort of way they can do it." He stepped back, "doubt it, though."

She nodded, "to find the Earth."

"So what can you do?" the Doctor asked of the Shadow Architect.

"Follow me."

OoO

On a residential street in London, a small squad of Daleks had lined several families along the pavement outside their homes. Children stared at the metal creatures with round eyes, clinging onto their parents, who seemed just as terrified as their offspring.

"_All humans will leave their homes! Earth is now under the control of the Daleks!_" one of the aliens called.

More people stumbled out of their front doors, bewildered and scared, ranging from infants to the elderly. The Daleks had no mercy, and already, many houses had been destroyed because of defiant idiots.

"Dad come back inside!" Sylvia Noble hissed at her father. The pair of them were peering through a hedge at the street before them. Wilfred Mott gripped his paintball gun with both hands, eager to somehow help stop the invasion.

"Those things have one eye," he whispered back. "If you get them smack bang in the eye with _this_, that's it, they're blind!"

"There's more than one! Please, come back inside!" She grabbed his arm, trying to pull him back.

"We're not going! Do you hear me?" a man was shouting at one of the Daleks. He pushed his wife and child back toward their house, and then followed, picking up a brick and throwing it across the road toward one of the aliens. "Get back in the sky! Go back to where you came from!"

The Daleks seemed unfazed. _"Dalek attack formation seven!"_ came the order.

The house the family had retreated to was grounded within second, flames bursting from the windows, and the brickwork crumbling.

"Oh my _god_," breathed Sylvia. "_Please_, let's go!"

"They're monsters…" But Wilfred did as he was told, following his daughter back through the shrubbery to their own street.

Thankfully, it was deserted.

The two were hurrying along to pavement when the screech of tires at the end of the street stopped them. A little green car was hurdling along, and screeched to a halt just beside them.

A brunette woman rolled down the window and leaned out.

"What are you doing out on the street?" she asked.

Peering into the car, Sylvia noted the faces of another blond woman, and a young dark man.

"Those Daleks, I was going to stop them with this." Wilfred held up his gun weakly, "but I don't think that's going to do much."

"No, mate, you need something like this," the man from the back seat grinned, holding up a _huge_ blaster weapon.

OoO

Gwen sat, alone, on the couch in the hub. The speaker on the wall had crackled into life, something about the commander of the United Nations finally admitting that the Earth had surrendered.

Was this it? After all the fighting and running, and almost _dying_, Torchwood could not save the Earth in the end? And Jack was not even there to help.

She heard the rattle of mugs on a tray, as Ianto appeared. Gently, he placed the tray on the table in front of her, and tried to smile at her. He handed her a mug of the steaming liquid, as though it was going to help. She took it without a word, but let it sit in her lap, without taking a mouthful.

"It's not all that bad," he told her. "Jack will come back, don't worry."

"Maybe," she replied mutely.

The speaker crackled again, and a new, sinister voice echoed around the hub, "_All humans selected for testing will follow Dalek instructions!"_

"I wonder what they're testing." Ianto straightened up, and looked toward the computers.

There was another crackle, followed by a series of beeping.

"_Hello? Is anyone there? Can anyone hear me?_"

"What's that?" Ianto asked.

The pair of Torchwood agents looked at the screens, where a black and white image of fuzz had appeared. There was a faint outline of a person through the white noise picture.

Hesitantly, Gwen placed the mug back down on the table, and stood. Approaching the keyboards arrange in front of the screens, the image suddenly jumped to full colour.

A woman sat at her own desk, in what appeared to be a living room.

"_Hello_?"

"I think she's trying to talk to us…" Gwen said.

Ianto joined her, reaching over to tap at the keyboard, before he held down the shift button.

"This is Torchwood, Cardiff. Who's that?" he asked.

The woman on the screen smiled, answering, "My name is Harriet Jones, former Prime Minister!"

"I know who she is!" Gwen grinned.

"We haven't much time!" Harriet told them, "Hello? Is anyone else there? Sarah-Jane Smith, at thirteen Bannerman road, are you there?"

The three of them waited.

"_She's not here. But I'm Luke, her son," _was the crackly reply.

"Where is she?" Harriet asked, peering at the screen. She turned to her left, and for a moment disappeared from view.

The Torchwood team watched as the screen in front of them split, and they saw Harriet's empty chair, and another fuzzy screen. On Harriet's end there was a muttered curse, before the picture flickered to that of a young, brown headed boy.

"She went out, I don't know where."

"Is there any way to get in touch with her?" Harriet asked, coming back into view.

"I can call her, I guess."

OoO

The shrill ring of a phone made the five occupants of the car jump a little more than it should have.

Sarah-Jane snatched up her phone from the centre console, pressing it to her ear, "Hello?"

"_Mum, it is Luke. I think you should come home, the former Prime Minister wants to talk to you."_

* * *

__Your reviews were amazing, I whacked this out tonight after reading them all. So thank you, guys :)

I had to sort of go back to my notes from three years ago to work out where I was actually going with this. I have the general idea, but there is SO much stuff to work out with the moving around of characters, and because I've messed about with it, some things don't work any more. I think I have it sorted, but if you find something that completely clashes with what I've already written, please point it out. I don't really have a beta for this story, so maybe you're all betas for me!

Thank you again for sticking with this story for so long if you've been there from the start! I hope you're enjoying the rewrite!

Watch this space for more updates, and please review!


End file.
